Domination of Eastern Europe : Native Nobilities and Foreign Absolutism 1500-1715

In doing so the section also identifies the economic factors that encouraged the rise of the nobilities of the region and the expansion of their prerogatives. [...] A glance at the tax registers of Gdansk indicates how quickly the grain trade was growing: in the 1q.6os the city exported about 2,50o lasts of rye; in the 14gos the figure was between 6,000 and to,000; in the 156os it reached the 40,000 level; and in the 162os a high point of 75,000 lasts was achieved.1) In the sixteenth century about 35 per cent of Poland's rye went for export; in the seventeent [...] The seemingly insatiable demand of the West, the high prices it was willing to pay, and the favourable conditions for agriculture in the East en- couraged the Easterners to concentrate almost exclusively on the production of food, to the detriment of other sectors of the economy. [...] Since it was in the interests of neither the king (Lokietek assumed the royal title in 1320) nor the nobility to have the recently defeated princes and magnates serve as feudal intermediaries, the relationship of the evolving nobility with the king became a direct one.8 It was the theoretically equidistant position of all members of the nobility to the monarch, regardless of their socio-economic c [...] But neither the confederations nor the tumultuous, haphazard local gatherings of the szlachta could take the place of a more struc- tured, institutionalized forum for the expression of the views of the entire estate.